By THE CANADIAN PRESSPublished January 21, 2013 - 10:06am Last Updated January 21, 2013 - 10:08am

TORONTO — It’s Canada’s fourth-annual Red Tape Awareness Week.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is marking the occasion with a new study of how much government regulation costs.

It says Red Tape costs Canadian businesses, on average, nearly $6,000 per employee per year.

That’s about $2,000 per employee above the comparable cost in the United States, or about 45 per cent more.

The business group estimates the total cost of regulation for Canadian businesses is $31 billion a year.

The latest report says nearly one-third of business owners in Canada might not have started up if they had known the extent of the regulatory burden.

The total cost of red tape in the United States, which has about 10 times as many people as Canada and the world’s largest economy, is an estimated $198 billion.

“Not all regulation is red tape, but businesses in both countries tell us regulatory costs could be reduced by about 30 per cent without harming the important health and safety objectives of regulation,” CFIB executive vice-president Laura Jones said Monday.

“That’s the equivalent of a $9 billion stimulus package each year in Canada with no downside.”